[section_dd][column_dd span=’12’][text_dd]jour·nal (jûr′nəl) n. a. A personal record of occurrences, experiences, and reflections kept on a regular basis; a diary.

Keeping a journal seems to hark back to times before the ubiquitous digital blogs and other social media undermined the value of tracking one’s thoughts and reflecting upon aspects of life and experience.

Yet in my work I find myself suggesting to clients that they try to keep a ’journal’ for a wide variety of purposes.  For example, there are people who keep ’intuition’ journals to track their intuitive hunches – they do this without editing their thoughts and then over a period of time begin to develop confidence in their intuition.  There are others who keep ’confidence’ journals – where they try to record one thing that went well each day which was a consequence of their behaviour.  Over a period of time this journal provides concrete evidence of their effectiveness and in turn has a postive impact upon their future behaviour. Other clients keep ’creative’ journals – where they play with ideas and allow the creative process to operate without the fear of public exposure.

For my own part I have been enormously influenced by my own attempts to keep a ’journal’. The first of these was nearly 20 years ago when I kept a field diary as part of my studies to track the day-to-day experiences I had as an assistant headteacher in a secondary school attempting to help a school become a ’learning organisation’. I also engaged in one of the world’s first on-line learning communities which helped me to understand the potential of sharing my thoughts publicly and the value of interaction  with other people.

Following that experience I kept an on-line journal (blog) when I became Headteacher at Dunbar Grammar School – unfortunately that link no longer works so that record has disappeared (one of the risks of on-line journals without a back up). My next journal experience was when I kept a Learning Log as Head of Education and then Director of Education for East Lothian Council and then Midlothian Council.

As a quick perusual of the Log will show my writing developed from keeping a simple record of what I did to a much deepr reflection on issues and ideas. I would say it took a good year for me to find my ’writing’ voice and I cringe when I look back at some of my early public writing.  Nevertheless, the experience played an enormous part in allowing me to make sense of my job and to have the opportunity for a deeper level of thinking from a job which could drown me in operational details.

On reflection my Learning Log provided me with an opportunity to see the connections between the disparate parts of my varied remit.  This was particularly reinforced by the ability to link topics by categories and to use the search facility on the blog.  For example, over a three year period I wrote extensively about school governance and a quick search of my blog pulls together everything I’d written about the topic.  This facility proved to be exceptionally useful – especially for someone like me who has such a poor memory!

On leaving these roles  I started a new ’journal’ as part of the Drummond International Blog. Once again the opportunity to keep a journal where ideas and experiences could be recorded proved to be exceptionally useful.

And so – as I venture out on a new direction I start my Ceannas Journal with the same curiousity and desire to explore new ideas and reflect upon my day to day experiences.  No doubt it will evolve and develop into something quite different from this initial post but that’s all part of the fun and discipline of keeping a Journal!

[/text_dd][/column_dd][/section_dd]